[lit-ideas] Re: The Problem of Evil
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 10:00:42 +0000 (GMT)
>I hadn't realized I was calling Popper's views on
> anything into question, unless Popper believed (as I'm pretty sure he
> didn't) that the meanings of words learned by someone learning a natural
> language might conceivably be just plain wrong, not just in special
> weird cases, but universally.
Actually...In a sense (in a certain meaning of "meaning") he *did* believe
this (contrary to Wittgenstein I guess): he believed that meanings are [and
can be shown to be] _symstemmatically ambiguous_ (given a sophisticated
enough language-system) and that the objective content of our 'thoughts'
extends beyond what we subjectively grasp of those contents - for these
reasons, and others, there is an important sense in which we never (fully)
know what we are talking about. It is also true that we *might conceivably be
just plain wrong...universally* - though he doesn't think this is the case it
is a logical possibility (where Wittgenstein, I take it, would say the
assertion of such a possibility is "nonsense").
Of course, like any good Kantian he would agree with the (Wittgensteinian?)
thesis that 'right' and 'wrong' in meaning can only be agreed as a matter
convention and that the sustainability of such claims in practice depends on
a more or less stable framework - but he would assert the framework is
fallible and *might be* completely mistaken even where it underpins claims as
to meaning (it is falllible also where it underpins claims as to truth).
As to 'the problem of evil' my feeling is that he would not agree that evil
is a prerequisite for freedom. Rather human freedom (he would avoid the term
'will' as theoretically dubious) is a precondition for moral action: but we
can easily conceive free but amoral creatures. Freedom is a necessary but not
sufficient condition for morality. To reply that we cannot conceive free but
amoral creatures, because they can only be properly free if they have morals,
is really only a definitional point that ties freedom intrinsically to
morality and really does not advance the argument but leads into a
definitional morass.
Nor is the 'free-but-amoral' just a conceptual possibility. It is fairly
obvious that children have some kind of physical freedom before they develop
a moral conscience and that this conscience also requires development
(through education etc. - in Popperian terms, through the interaction of
W123).
In my view the term 'evil' as a synonym for 'morally bad' or 'morally wrong'
is unproblematic but the term is so embedded in theological and other dubious
metaphysical speculation (so that people speak, for example, of evil as a
'force' - a highly dubious notion) that the problem of evil might be better
addressed as the 'problem of the morally bad or wrong'.
Best,
Donal
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